Boiler room duo jailed in £3.5m carbon credits scam
TWO crooks with a long history of dodgy deals have been jailed after running boiler room frauds that tricked investors out of £3.5 million by selling worthless carbon credits and diamonds.
Dylan Creaven, 44, and Andrew Rowe, 41, appeared at Blackfriars Crown Court in London last Thursday. Both were sentenced to 13 years in prison after being convicted of fraud.
Chris Tarrant, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: ‘More than 100 victims contacted the police and trading standards to report these crimes, some of whom lost life savings.’
The pair ran Agon Energy Limited and Lanyard Capital Limited, based in smart offices in St James’s Square in Central London.
They cold-called investors with false claims that carbon credits would rocket in value as businesses were forced to compensate for their carbon footprint. And investment diamonds they sold were nonexistent or were very low grade. Both fraudsters have been on my radar for years. Creaven was a ‘shadow director’ of Berkeley Warbeck Limited, a land investment business that was closed down in 2012 after the Insolvency Service found its bosses pocketed £3.2million by selling plots for 31 times their value.
Rowe was one of the gang behind Scala Land. I warned in 2008 that it was selling land at high prices by falsely claiming it had experts who could spot development sites. It admitted none of its sites had ever gained planning permission. Rowe was also involved in Century Land, a similar company that raked in £10million from investors. I sounded the alarm over its scam in 2010.